Spreadsheet Models for Managers

Getting Access to Spreadsheet Models for Managers

If you use Excel to model businesses, business processes, or
business transactions, this course will change your life. You’ll learn how to create tools for yourself that will amaze
even you. Unrestricted use of this material is available in two ways.

As a stand-alone Web site

It resides on your computer, and you can use it anywhere. No need for Internet access.

At this Web site

If you have access to the Internet whenever you want to view this material, you can purchase on-line access.
Unlimited usage. I’m constantly making improvements and you’ll get them as soon as they’re available.

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Spreadsheet Models for Managers

Some projects have documents called “Word Requirements” or “Excel Requirements”

In some previous years, these documents were part of the term project

Some of their requirements were different from yours

But you can still use these documents to get indications of what some of
your requirements might be

Read what they thought a given requirement was for them, check to see if you
have a requirement anything like it

But: the lessons learned probably do apply

Read all the lessons learned as soon as possible

They are warnings about what troubles people before you encountered

Using the project library with caution can save you lots of work when it comes to gathering
requirements. But it can also be dangerous because their requirements differed from yours, and
because they didn’t necessarily get everything right. Still, reading their results can be
helpful as long as you use them only as guidance for uncovering your own requirements.

Over the years, students have submitted hundreds of course projects.
Having worked with these teams, and graded their submissions, we’ve noticed patterns in the
kinds of issues that tend to be challenging for project teams and individuals as they
develop their projects. The most common traps are summarized in a Web page: “Common Mistakes in Past
Student Projects.” It isn’t required reading, but we do recommend it.

We’ve collected examples of course projects students have submitted over the years. They’re
stored in the Course
Project Library.

Because we change the project requirements every year, the projects in the library aren’t
necessarily precise examples of what you’ll be doing, but they do give you some insight into the
kind of thing we’re looking for.

Most important, in the Final Report is a section called Lessons Learned. If you take time to
read the Lessons Learned from these projects, you’ll be able to avoid the troubles many of your
predecessors encountered. There’s little point in repeating the mistakes of others, so take a
look at their lessons learned.

In years past, we’ve learned that what makes a model dynamic — as opposed to static — can be
difficult to grasp. If you have some doubts yourself, and you haven’t yet looked at the reading on
Models vs. Tools, we believe that you
will find it helpful.